Dogs and Writing

My sheepdog gave me some advice the other day, “Never take a bath. How will others know who you are if you don’t smell like you?”Good advice.

Opps. Wrong advice. I meant some writing advice. He said, “Sheep like to wander. Sheep will wander at the first opportunity. You must be vigilant when you are herding sheep.”

That got me thinking about story and the way I struggle to figure out what really belongs. I think that it is easy, easy, easy to be distracted by all kinds of interests: language, interesting thoughts, minor characters and diversions of all kinds. They make us take our eyes off our sheep and some of them wander off. The novel looses narrative momentum. A novel needs narrative momentum. So, watch your sheep. I am trying to be better about this and still let my novel wander to unusual places.

I do like those unusual places.

Coming up–my next post will be about my first month as an independent author–my launch and how that went, some strategies I used, and also some excellent news–an audio publisher who approached me about doing the audio for my novel.

Thanks for reading.